When Kevin Thelwell arrived at Everton, he had little idea what the coming years would hold.

The new director of football came to Merseyside in February 2022 with a head full of ideas and a club in need of an overhaul. The dust had not yet settled on the appointment of Frank Lampard weeks earlier, while there was still hope that Finch Farm would be the place Dele Alli could rediscover the form that had once made him one of the most coveted youngsters in world football.

The three years since have been anything but the feel-good ride some around the club hoped would follow the changes of that winter, which had earlier seen Rafa Benitez’s ill-fated reign come to an end.

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They have instead been dominated by relegation battles and boardroom crises. Thelwell’s role has been to find his way through storms largely of other people’s making. With his time at Everton now set to come to an end in the summer, when his contract expires, it makes assessing his time with the Blues a challenge.

It also makes the job facing new owners The Friedkin Group that bit tougher as they attempt to oversee a major transition through a summer of huge change and opportunity.

That TFG can begin to look ahead to the summer is, of itself, significant. This has been another winter of turmoil at Everton but, following the extraordinary run of form that has followed the return of David Moyes to the Blues dugout, planning can begin for another season in the Premier League.

It is the earliest point at which that has been possible during Thelwell’s tenure. For all the hope of better days to come when he was appointed, that season descended into a turbulent survival fight that ended with the dramatic comeback win against Crystal Palace in the penultimate game of the campaign.

The following year, top flight status was only confirmed on the final day, when Abdoulaye Doucoure’s thunderbolt against Bournemouth prevented catastrophe - this time with Sean Dyche having replaced Lampard during a troubling January.

Boardroom changes followed that summer and the interim appointments supposed to have been a holding move ahead of a takeover left Dyche and Thelwell exposed amid a vacuum of leadership. Across the two prosecutions under league Profit and Sustainability Regulations that followed, it was Dyche who was answerable to the press and Thelwell who was among those asked to appear before the oversight panels that hit Everton with two separate points deductions. Despite those off-the-pitch issues, Everton put together a campaign that would have pitched them firmly in mid-table had it not been for the deductions that instead led to safety concerns.

As Thelwell recently told club media, the belief was Everton entered this campaign with a stronger squad and hopes of a solid season through which ownership problems would be resolved while the club ensured it would move to its landmark new stadium in the summer as Premier League outfit.

That now looks set to happen after Moyes sparked a seven game unbeaten run that has taken Everton 15 points from the bottom three. That gap, now a gulf, was just two points when he took over seven weeks ago.

The season to date has been a contradiction. Dyche left in January with the club - and Thelwell - facing a fourth consecutive relegation fight. When he did, the summer of recruitment that fuelled such positivity heading into the campaign was flattering to deceive. Jake O’Brien, the big money centre back signing from Lyon, had not made a league start, Jesper Lindstrom and Jack Harrison, the loanee right midfielders, were fighting a battle neither could find the confidence or end product to win, while Armando Broja had only just recovered from the injury he arrived on loan in the summer with. He would pick up another serious injury just hours after Dyche officially left the club.

Only Iliman Ndiaye, whose ability to excite was largely constrained by Dyche’s defensive demands, and deadline day signing Orel Mangala - another loanee - had cemented themselves in the Blues boss’ plans.

With Everton struggling in front of goal there was growing scrutiny of the forwards recruited by Thelwell. Neal Maupay, now at Marseille, had been an unmitigated disaster while Youssef Chermiti had been a development signing that increasingly felt like a luxury expense the club could not afford. Meanwhile, Beto’s struggles left him on the cusp of a January exit.

Seven weeks later and Everton’s recruitment has looked better and better with every week under Moyes. Ndiaye continued to shine before he suffered ligament damage against Liverpool, while Lindstrom and O’Brien have formed an effective partnership on the right. While Lindstrom is yet to record a goal or assist, his confidence has clearly grown - while O’Brien stepped up with the diving header that rescued a point at Brentford on Wednesday.

Harrison has grown in recent substitute appearances but the big winner has been Beto. It might have been injuries to his rivals that led to him remaining at Everton but the result has been a happy one. The 27-year-old has hit five league goals for Moyes in a run of form crucial to the club’s progress.

There is, therefore, an irony in Thelwell’s future now looking set to be elsewhere just as his record improves. His signings are growing in influence while he has sought to overhaul the scouting network and academy, all through a time in which PSR has forced him to slash wages by reducing the size and age of the playing squad. His teams have looked more and more capable in spite of him having to sell key players time and again - Richarlison, Anthony Gordon, Alex Iwobi among them. Last summer, the major sale was Amadou Onana, Thelwell’s biggest signing but one that represented the model he hoped to establish at Everton, one where the club proved adept at signing talent that could grow with the Blues before being sold for enough money to sustain the progress and ambition that followed.

Everton have been fighting for survival on and off the pitch during Thelwell’s time at the club. The takeover by TFG was only on the cards because the club had retained its top flight status through five transfer windows in which Everton, overall, made a profit of around £80m. The next-best performing Premier League ever-present, Wolverhampton Wanderers, had a net spend of around negative £40m over the same period.

Speaking of his “difficult” three years at the club, he said just after the transfer window closed: “It is not a badge of honour to say we have been outspent by everybody in the league but it is a necessity and it has been a necessity for the last three years. I know how we have survived, but when I look back I wonder how we have survived… We are coming out of a tunnel. We can see the light but in our reality we are not quite out of that tunnel. I feel we are in fairly good shape and that gives us a real strong opportunity to attack the market and start to develop a team that is capable of getting back to winning trophies and getting into Europe and befitting of the world class stadium we are going to be moving into.”

Thelwell hoped his prize would be the chance to take Everton into the new stadium and that brighter future. After years of ducking and diving in the transfer window this summer, when the club’s PSR constraints relax and TFG’s vast resources can support a rebuild, he hoped to get the opportunity to oversee it.

Those hopes are now diminished. A turning point may well have been the appointment of Moyes. The current Blues boss has spoken candidly about his feelings over the director of football role. While he has expressed a willingness to work with one, it has been clear he has strong feelings over the relationship.

He told the ECHO before his return: “Ultimately, I think the manager, maybe called ‘the head coach’ now, are the ones who are getting fired for it so if I’m going to get fired, I’m going to get fired because it’s players I sign or I choose to sign. It’s how I play and not how I get told to play. You need to be able to do that.

“If it’s changed differently, then I can do that. If somebody turns around and says: ‘By the way, I’m signing the players for you,’ I can do that.

“But don’t be putting my name to everything then, everyone you bring in, and not taking responsibility. There are very few people now who really want to take the responsibility for what’s going on.”

It is also clear Moyes takes pride in his ability to recruit players, another potential source of friction with a director of football. That potential could now disappear, with TFG assessing how they will restructure the football operation at the club. There is a confidence in Moyes’ ability to identify suitable talent, and in the wider recruitment structure that it can function successfully if the director of football role is deemed redundant.